


never knew loving could hurt this good

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Homophobia, Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M, Minor Character Death, Rating will change, Slow Burn, more tags to be added as we go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a story of two boys falling in love with a side of sadness and some Troye Sivan playing in the background.</p><p>Or, Lance and Keith meet in kindergarten and grow up, together and apart at various intervals, making and breaking relationships with family and friends, but in the end something always brings them back to one another, and it takes them both a long time to figure out just what love is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i. children's names

i. _children’s names_

 

“Hey, you. You. Um, mullet kid?”

Bewildered, Keith looks up from the set of building blocks he’s playing with. He’s had them all to himself throughout the morning break period. Actually, he usually has them to himself for each one of the three daily breaks (not including recess, which happens outside). Learning how to count and how to spell is hard work, and kindergartners take frequent pauses from their lessons to have play time. Part of the goal is to get them to socialize with one another and make friends – but Keith hasn’t gotten along with any of the other children so far.

The boy standing in front of him scuffs one tiny sneaker against the carpet. His blue eyes are so bright, radiant against the dark tan of his face, with the ruddy hint of a blush beneath the surface of his cheeks. He keeps looking from side to side, down at his shoes, anywhere but Keith for a moment, and then he finally takes a deep breath and says all in one rush,

“HiI’mLancedoyouwannabemyfriend?”

Keith blinks at him uncomprehendingly.

The other boy laughs nervously and repeats himself, more carefully this time, “I’m Lance, and I, um – I’m really sorry I forgot your name, but you should tell me what it is again, and we can maybe be friends if you want?”

“…It’s Keith.”

“Keith! That’s a cool name. Let’s be friends, Keith, please? You’re like, the coolest, and I think I’m also pretty cool, so it’s a perfect match.”

Keith scrunches his eyebrows. “Me? The coolest? Why?”

“Well I mean, you’re kinda like a lone wolf, right? I think that’s really cool! I wish I could be like you.” Something dawns on Lance, and pure horror flashes across his face. “Oh no! I can’t be your friend, can I? Because you’ve got your whole alone thing going on. Not that that isn’t cool, ’cause it is! But –”

Hesitantly, Keith interjects, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you can be my friend if you want to?”

Lance’s face lights up. His grin is so wide it practically touches his ears. “Really?”

Keith nods slowly.

Lance plops himself down on the plush carpet next to Keith and starts playing with the blocks Keith had started to think of as _his_ , and it annoys him a little, but he doesn’t tell Lance to leave like he has with all the other kids, even when Lance’s knee bumps his own and it feels like a serious violation of personal space. The other boy is boisterous and loud, but funny, too. The polar opposite of quiet, boring Keith. Lance was not the person Keith would have picked out of the class if he absolutely _had_ to have a friend – but apparently Lance picked him, and Keith doesn’t mind that too much.

Something about Lance draws Keith in right from the start, though, and he doesn’t know how to describe it, but he doesn’t know that it has a hold on him and doesn’t seem to have any plans to let go. And Keith doesn’t really mind that either.

Lance may be a little hyper and a little bit of a loudmouth, but he always goes completely quiet when Keith is about to speak, like he’s invested in every word of wisdom that Keith may drop and he doesn’t want to miss anything, even when all Keith is mumbling is, “Can you hand me the red block?”

They spend the rest of that break together, and the one after that, and the one after that. By the end of the day, when they’re standing with the other kindergartners, waiting for their names to be called to let them know their parents are there to pick them up, Keith has learned that Lance’s last name is McClain and that he has three siblings. Keith is an only child; he lives with his mom and dad, who have just arrived to get him, according to the announcement. Keith says goodbye and heads for the door, but Lance grabs his arm and stops him for a moment.

“By the way,” he says, glancing up at Keith’s face with an almost shy smile, “I like your eyes.”

For some reason, that strikes Keith as an odd thing for a boy to say to another boy. But he figures, since Lance is his friend now, that he should be polite, and so he says, “I like yours, too,” before he walks out.

Keith doesn’t think about it at the time, but some part of him realizes that he’s being completely honest. Lance’s shining cerulean eyes are what Keith comes to associate with a new word he’s learning how to spell: water.

(Later, he’ll learn another word that he automatically connects to the color of Lance's eyes. Blue will always mean beauty to him, even though he won't remember why.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will likely be pretty long, but I don't have a regular update schedule and I can't make any promises, I'm sorry. I'll do my best.
> 
> Bonus points if you can guess which Troye Sivan song I pull each chapter title from.


	2. ii. don't give it up just yet

ii. _don’t give it up just yet_

 

It’s easier being Lance’s friend than Keith anticipated it would be. All in all, not that much is expected of him, just standard stuff like spending their breaks, lunches, and recesses together. It’s not like Keith really has anything else to do, and besides, it’s kinda fun. Lance knows how to make anything fun.

Some days, they’re pirates, digging in the dirt beneath the woodchips in search of buried treasure. All they ever find are worms, but it’s good fun anyways. Other times, they’ll pretend they’re on a grand expedition, exploring all the nooks and crannies of the playground. Everything is gigantic to them, and danger lurks around every corner. Keith and Lance sometimes treat the bigger kids as monsters, or enemy soldiers, and they hide from them and shoot their imaginary laser guns from afar.

Keith’s favorite place becomes the jungle gym. The structure is relatively easy to climb, even with his small legs, so he likes to sit on top of it and survey the rest of the playground from what he thinks might be the eye level of the fifth graders. Lance thinks the jungle gym is kinda boring. His favorite place, for whatever reason, is the monkey bars.

“But we can’t reach them,” Keith objects when Lance insists on going to play there. “And the big kids will get mad at us.”

Lance doesn’t heed his warning. He leads the way straight to the monkey bars with Keith trailing behind. Sure enough, the older kids jeer at them and try to chase them off, but Lance is completely unintimidated, so Keith tries to follow his example. He puffs his chest out, stands as tall as he can at his meager height of 3’6”, and tries to look unafraid. Eventually, the fifth graders decide that Keith and Lance are too lame to bother with, and go off to claim some other part of the playground, leaving the boys with the monkey bars all to themselves.

Or, leaving Lance with the monkey bars all to himself. Keith backs out halfway up the ladder.

Lance, being Lance, leaps on the chance to tease him. “What, are you scared?”

“No,” Keith says defensively. “I just can’t reach them.”

“Can’t won’t never get you nowhere,” Lance tells him matter-of-factly, even though it doesn’t make very much sense and definitely doesn’t follow what little they’ve been taught about grammar. He bumps Keith out of the way to tackle the ladder himself – he makes it all the way up to the top, where he holds the handles on the sides and looks down at Keith, grinning. “That’s what my papa always says.”

Keith feels nervous just watching. The bars are so far above his head, far above even Lance at the top of the ladder. Lance teeters on the precipice. If he’s having second thoughts, Keith can barely tell, because he doesn’t hesitate for more than an instant before he leans forward and takes off.

Lance goes more outwards than up; his hands are several inches too low to even touch the first bar. He hits the woodchips face-first, spread-eagled. Keith stands in shock for a moment, then runs to his side and shakes him anxiously. What is he supposed to do if Lance dies? Lance is the only person he wants to be friends with!

But as far as he can tell, Lance probably isn’t dead. Lance is just defeated. He doesn’t move from where he fell, except to turn his head enough to breathe so he won’t be inhaling woodchip dust. There’s a thin scratch high on his left cheek and a bruise forming on his chin. If he were badly hurt, Keith is pretty sure he’d be screaming or crying or something, so chances are the only wounds he’s sustained are to his pride and to his face.

From across the playground, there’s uproarious laughter. Keith looks up and sees the older kids standing there, pointing at Lance and making fun of the way he fell.

Without thinking, Keith bares his teeth and yells, “What are you looking at?”

The group of fifth graders goes quiet for a moment, exchanging glances among themselves, before they burst out laughing again, this time at Keith. His face gets so hot, he thinks even his ears are burning with shame. All he can think to do is turn his back on the fifth graders.

Lance is sitting up now. Definitely not dead. He’s holding out his splinter-speckled palms, looking down at hands that didn’t even come close to their goal. Like Keith, he’s red in the face. His blue eyes waver with unshed tears, and that’s what makes Keith forget his own embarrassment, forget the older, meaner kids, forget everything but Lance. He grabs Lance by the hand, a hand he knows will one day reach that monkey bar, and he pulls him to his feet.

“You’ll make it next time,” he says firmly.

“You think so?” Lance asks, still teary.

“I know so.”

“How?”

“Because you’re Lance McClain. My best friend. I bet you can do anything in the world.”

Something about that brings back Lance’s big, stretched-to-the-ears smile. One of his hands wipes at his eyes, the other one stays intertwined with Keith’s. If anything, he grips tighter. It’s another thing that Keith doesn’t mind, even though it feels a little weird. And he doesn’t know it, but it looks weird to the older kids. Inevitably, rumors will spread about the two boys in kindergarten who held hands. But Keith just keeps his chin up and puts on his bravest face, because it’s what Lance would do. Because Lance is his best friend.

(It will be a while before Keith knows or cares about the meaning of the word ‘gay’, but when he does, he’ll think it was a mistake to ever hold Lance’s hand like that.)


	3. iii. and my mommy, she can't put down the phone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for translations.

iii. _and my mommy, she can’t put down the phone_

 

Keith doesn’t mention his new friend to his parents until after the monkey bars incident. He doesn’t tell them _about_ the monkey bars incident, but he tells them a lot about Lance. He can’t seem to stop talking about Lance once he starts, which frankly baffles his mother and father, because Keith isn’t a very talkative child. He’s as capable of speech as most other kids his age, but even at five years old, he’s shown he prefers nonverbal communication much of the time. Normally, they have to coax and pry to get him to reveal any details about his experiences in school.

“Umma, he has blue eyes,” he says to his mom, as if it’s the most important thing in the world.

“I have blue eyes, too,” Keith’s dad points out.

“But Lance doesn’t have white skin, Lance has brown skin, and blue eyes.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Dad says carefully, the way dads do when they’re trying to explain a sensitive topic that a young child might not understand. “There are people of all races who have different skin. It’s not wrong, it’s just different.”

“I know. Just different,” Keith agrees. “Umma’s skin is different from your skin.” He takes his mom’s hand and his dad’s hand and holds them out to compare with his in the middle. “My skin is different too. But Lance’s skin is _different_ different.”

Umma asks him, “Do you know where Lance’s family is from?”

“He said Cuba?” Keith says uncertainly. “But I don’t know where that is.”

Dad pulls out a map and puts Keith on his lap to show him. He points out where they live, in the upper part of Florida, and then points to a long island in the sea. It doesn’t seem all that far away. Keith can walk his fingers from his home to Cuba with only a few steps.

Umma mentions something about how it would be nice to talk with Lance’s mother, and Keith wonders what Lance’s mother’s voice is like. He knows Umma sounds different from other women, from his teacher, Mrs. Wether. She tells him it’s because she comes from South Korea. Do moms from South Korea sound the same as moms from Cuba? Or do moms from Cuba sound like kindergarten teachers from the United States? It’s all very confusing to him.

As it turns out, Lance’s mom sounds different from both Umma and Mrs. Wether. When Lance invites Keith over for a play date, she answers the door wearing an apron, with Lance right on her heels. Her accent is thick and full with rolling r’s, smooth like the sands of her country’s beaches. Her skin is like Lance’s, a sun-rich brown, and her long hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. Unlike Lance’s, her eyes are black as jet. She looks strict, and intimidating, and Keith has to fight the urge to hide behind Umma’s leg.

Lance, on the other hand, is bold as always. He takes a big step forwards, looks up at Umma, and introduces himself. “Hi, Keith’s mom, I’m Lance, it’s nice to meet you!”

“The pleasure is mine,” Umma says, smiling. Keith thinks she has the most beautiful smile in the world. He wonders if Lance’s mom ever smiles at all.

Lance’s mom takes him by the shoulder and reminds him to call Umma “Mrs. Kogane”, not “Keith’s mom”. And then her eyes fall on Keith expectantly, and he freezes up. He can’t remember even the most basic thing to say, at least not in English – _mannaseo bangapseumnida_ is the only thing in his mind, but Korean won’t do him any good here.

“You can call me Mrs. McClain,” Lance’s mom says, unexpectedly and gently.

Keith discovers he really like the way she talks – her accent isn’t like Umma’s, but it has the same vaguely exotic comfort to it. The one thing they have in common is that they both sound like moms, and that’s good enough for him.

“I-I’m Keith,” he stammers out.

Mrs. McClain smiles. She has a nice smile, too. A mom smile. Keith doesn’t know where he ever got the idea that she never smiled. She isn’t old, but her face is etched with laugh lines and small wrinkles. Her eyes are dark, but they shine like two smooth stones. All moms are beautiful, Keith decides. Especially Umma and Mrs. McClain.

“Well, come on!”

Lance grabs Keith by the hand and swings him around Mrs. McClain’s legs and into the house. Keith looks back over his shoulder at Umma, who nods and smiles at him. Tentatively, Keith smiles back. He lets Lance tug him down the hallway, leaving Umma and Mrs. McClain at the door to chat for a little longer.

(Keith doesn’t know why Umma and Mrs. McClain hit it off so easily, but he also doesn’t know why they won’t always talk on such a friendly basis, and the answer to both is one thing: him and Lance.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> umma: familiar word for 'mother' in Korean, pronounced 'oh-ma', sometimes spelled as eomma  
> mannaseo bangapseumnida: a Korean greeting used when meeting someone new, pronounced 'mahn-nah-soh pahn-ghap-sum-nee-dah'
> 
> Important:  
> I do not speak Korean, nor do I study it, but I wanted to include it as I see it as a big part of Keith's culture in this story. If there are any readers who speak Korean and see me make a mistake, please correct me, or if you would like to become a beta reader to help me fix everything before I even post, I am more than willing to do that.  
> On another note, I'm Latina and I do speak Spanish, but I'm not Cuban and all I know about Cuban culture is what I've read. If there's anyone from a Cuban background who would be willing to help me or suggest some cultural aspects of Lance's family, I'd love to learn so I could include more of that in later chapters.
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading, and sorry for the sudden hiatus. I'm back now, at least for a little while.


End file.
